It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

This is definitely my favorite time of year! I am not a big decorator. In fact, Dallin, my 4 year old, was upset that I didn't do very much for Halloween. October was a hard month for me, so I excused myself from it! Anyway, Christmas is a completely different story! We have our "tree in the window" and today was such a beautiful day that Jeff was able to put up our second story of lights. (I will show pics when I get a good one!) We bought our lights 5 years ago, but we didn't buy enough and were never able to find the same ones again. By some strange coincidence, Suzie Petunia happened to have the same ones as us, but wasn't using them anymore, and kindly donated them to our cause. Thanks, Suzie!
To continue with the Christmas spirit, today I took Dallin and Emily to see Santa fly in on a helicopter to our local shopping plaza. It was very short (took all of 5 minutes and they were even earlier than advertised, so many of my friends missed it!) but it was pretty cool and the kids loved it. Then I took Dallin on a "date" and we went to see Suzie's Christmas Concert. They did a great job. Her hubby, Zook, was the narrator and was wonderful, and my favorite part was watching cute pregnant Suzie rocking out to "A Charlie Brown Christmas" music! Sorry that everyone else missed out. I really do admire Suzie and Zook for their involvement with this cause. It is called Voices for the Performing Arts and their whole goal is to support fine arts in the school and the community. They are both dedicated members.
After the concert, I left with one of my good friends to try and catch some of my Young Women (teenage girls that I work with at church) in a dance competition. They went on earlier than they were supposed to and the directions were horrid, so we actually didn't get to see them dance. :-( We did talk to the girls and hopefully they know our hearts were in the right place and we will catch them another time.
The next stop was a shopping center that had all of the places I needed to go all together in one area. I am not a huge shopper, I like to know what I am getting and get in and out. This doesn't always work out like I plan, but today the stars were aligned and it was amazing!! I got almost all of my Christmas shopping done and even found an awesome steal for my sweet Emily. It is a Graco 10 in 1 Playset for dolls. It has a swing, stroller, play pen, high chair, carrier, bouncy seat, diaper bag, etc etc, and it was on sale for $20! I had seen these for $50 on line!! I couldn't believe it. She will go crazy. It will be fun when I have my little baby and she will be able to put her doll in the swing right next to the real swing. Anyway, what an awesome day. Sue is one of my closest friends and we had a wonderful time just chatting the day away. She is actually the one who spotted the playset. I wish I would have bought 2, so I could sell one on ebay! Whew, I am ready for bed. I hope everyone is enjoying the season.